After four seasons and 45 episodes of his award-winning hacker hits series “Mr. Robot”, nobody will seriously doubt that a protagonist embodied by Oscar winner Rami Malek (“Bohemian Rhapsody”) has outstanding computer skills. But as a CIA analyst Charles Heller, he is still not fully taken by the “real” secret agents such as The Bear (Jon Bernthal): for the real-life-007s, he is at best a better IT nerd-and even if it is probably primarily safety reasons, it just fits perfectly into the picture that Charles and his colleagues have to do their decoding activities in windowless basement.
Now there are always novels, series and films in which someone with purely analytical training suddenly finds themselves in the field of field, for example Melissa McCarthy as the title -giving analyst in “Spy – Susan Cooper Undercover”. But “The amateur“From James Hawes there goes another crucial step-and the starting situation is so exciting: Charles Heller is not sent to the use by his bosses. Instead, it is himself who blackmailed the CIA director Moore (Holt McCallany) with compromising documents to train him as a killer To be able to avenge wife Sarah (Rachel Brosahnan).
The last happy moments before CIA analyist Charles Heller (Rami Malek) will lose his wife Sarah (Rachel Brosahhan) in a cruel attack.
Former Canadian journalist Robert Littell has written a whole series of espionage novels, especially about the machinations of CIA, KGB and Stasi during the Cold War since the early 1970s. But despite the success of the books, surprisingly few of them have been filmed so far. In addition to the British mini series “The Company” (2007) and “Legends” (2014), only “The Amateur” has made it onto the big screen-but this twice: According to the B-movie agent action “The Second Man” (1981) with John Savage in the title role, the remake is now much more high-quality. James Hawes (“One Life”) has never been a director who stands out with staging sparrow, but “The Amateur” is clean craft and thus the perfect stage for his dominant lead actor.
Bond-Böse weight Rami Malek (“no time to die”) shines in the ambivalent part, precisely because this falls apart in two so opposite parts: On the one hand, there are primarily the areas in which the highly intelligent Charly all overthries. At the same time, however, he often occurs as the title -giving amateur, who only hits 50 percent on the nearby on the shooting range. In any case, his crash course instructor Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) believes that Charly does not have a chance to put his comprehensive revenge plans into practice-if only because his nature is simply not that of a killer, which is why he does not manage to push the withdrawal of a pistol directed towards a person.
Pollen and pool
“The Amateur” can do almost without action. And it will only be really spectacular if Charly-as can already be seen in the trailer-blows up the real pool in the air, which connects two buildings of the Embassy Garden complex in Baltimore at a height of 35 meters. But the whole thing is still exciting because Charly is not just able to clear everything and everyone, but has to adapt his plans to his own professional skills and ethical restrictions. Instead of on shooting iron and torture, he has to fall back on a sack full of flower pollen as a torture and murder method.
Charles has no choice but to blackmail the CIA director Moore (Holt McCallany) in order to start his personal revenge campaign.
DangerThe following paragraph is about the dissolution of “The Amateur”, which of course we do not anticipate content, but some may already understand a general classification as a spoiler. So Read more from here at your own risk!
According to everything that has so far leaked to the Nachrehs for the Marvel blockbuster, the political-critical proportion of “Captain America: Brave New World” was subsequently melted down noticeably. We do not know whether because of the current political mood, a similar decision was made in “The Amateur”, but it definitely feels like this: Over and over again, Charles watches the video of the murder of his wife in the course of the film to discover a little detail that he has overlooked so far – and there is also a lot otherwise indicated that in the end a decisive twist awaits us. But puff cake!
“The Amateur” consistently pulls through his story. And you almost want to say that this is a refreshing variety. Only there is still a twist in the novel and also in the first film adaptation, which would also have fit very well in the remake. Here he fails without any apparent dramaturgical reason. Perhaps you didn't want to beat the US institutions more than absolutely necessary for reasons outside the film. And so the disturbing end of the original was replaced by a resolution, which, due to its taconous harmlessness, has almost even more disturbing.
Conclusion: “The amateur” delivers straight-line agent thrill with exciting premise and exciting protagonist-only in the end there is only a loud breeze instead of the expected big storm.